Written Answers Thursday 19 February 2009

Scottish Executive

Foster Care

Jamie Hepburn (Central Scotland) (SNP): To ask the Scottish Executive what the minimum fostering allowance is in each local authority area.

Adam Ingram: Each local authority determines its own criteria and rates for the payment of fostering allowances to its approved foster carers.

  Information on the fostering allowances paid by each local authority is not held centrally.

National Conversation

George Foulkes (Lothians) (Lab): To ask the Scottish Executive whether it considers that the reputation of the National Conversation would be enhanced if the IP addresses of online contributors were routinely collected and compared for consistency with the stated location of such contributors.

Nicola Sturgeon: The general privacy statement on the Scottish Government’s main website, which includes the National Conversation pages, states that any analytical data collected will not be used to identify any user personally. This approach is consistent with conventions for such sites and with section 38(1) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act.

Social Work

Mary Scanlon (Highlands and Islands) (Con): To ask the Scottish Executive how many social worker vacancies there are, broken down by local authority.

Adam Ingram: The whole-time equivalent (WTE) vacancies of social workers broken down by local authority is published in table 21 of the Staff of Scottish Local Authority Social Work Services, 2007 Statistics Publication Notice which is available at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/stats/bulletins/00667 and the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 46065).

Young People

Claire Baker (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Lab): To ask the Scottish Executive how many people aged 16 to 19 were not in education, employment or training in each of the last five years for which information is available and when updated statistics will be published.

Fiona Hyslop: The Annual Population Survey is the official source for national estimates of the numbers of people aged 16 to 19 who were not in education, employment or training. The estimates for each the last five years for which data are available are given in table 1. The estimate for the year 2008 will be published in June or July 2009 when results from the Annual Population Survey are published. The 2007 Annual Population Survey results can be found at this page on the Scottish Government website:

  http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Labour-Market/Publications.

  Table 1 People Aged 16 to 19 Not in Education, Employment or Training, Scotland

  

 Year
 Level


 2003
 35,000


 2004
 35,000


 2005
 37,000


 2006
 32,000


 2007
 32,000



  Source: Annual Scottish Labour Force Survey 2003 (March 2003 to February 2004). Annual Population Survey 2004 onwards.

  Note: Estimates have been rounded to the nearest thousand.